Here is something from David Allen's blog that I enjoyed and wanted to share. I believe it can be applied to all the arts and certainly to photography. Editing is a most important step in the creative process, but first you must have something to prune. It reminds me to keep shooting no matter what.
"It's all about pruning...
Decompressing from a nonstop day on this cool Ojai evening, pinching the new growth off the ends of a couple of my bonsai, I'm catching the seed of what's got to be another major theme to understand and hone and, well - prune. Editing is where the action is. Many an author and screenwriter I've met confirm this.
So, what's the life/work equivalent of that germ of creative truth? Creativity is. Can't help it - anything alive grows. But that growth can take on meta-natural proportion when it is facilitated...by what? Pruning. Take the sentence down to half its words. Cut the dead wood out of your team. Unhook from the non-mission-critical projects.
The first thing is to have something to prune. Then, it's the ever-graceful dance of taking away that which is growing haphazard to allow the essence of the life form artistry to unfold and come to conscious expression. Or something like that..."